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I have noticed that when using the EZ Flash IV, applying the EZ4 Client's "save patch" prevents me from doing single-pak multiplayer, but using a clean rom works. Is the save patch absolutely necessary? What does it do exactly?

I'm not sure if this is simply a problem with single-pak multiplayer however, so do save patched games work with multi-pak multiplayer? Thanks everyone

GBA saves had quite a few versions and chips available ( http://www.pocketheaven.com/ph/wiki/index.php?title=GBA_Saves has an overview and pull up something like http://www.advanscene.com/ if you want to go game by game). All current GBA carts (save perhaps the supercard but that is not a good alternative and will be worse for this sort of thing) simply adapted ROMs to save on SRAM instead of whatever they used (it was a matter of searching for what type it was and adding a premade patch at a known location relative to the save type name).

It shouldn't have an effect* but it seems like it does for certain cards and there are other patches that run all the time that also mess up multiplayer timings. We did however notice some of the EZ2 patches helped with some games and you can grab a bunch from http://ezflash.sosuke.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=17714&start=0 (just apply the patch and copy the resulting file to the EZ4 along with a save, no need for EZ4client if you are using one of the patches).

*reset on the other hand will often add an additional interrupt/layer to things and that will cause trouble so make sure it is just saves.

If however your games work without the save patch (some will error out if you do not have a save patch) and you do not need the saves loaded (not all multipak games benefit from single player saves and this especially applies to most) carry on with raw/clean roms. Even if they boot a lot of games will not save properly (even if they are otherwise SRAM saving games) if you do not have save patches.

Equally it is not ideal but there are versions of VBA with link patches http://vbalink.wz.cz/ and http://www.vbalink.info/ (not sure if VBA-m also gained support and it might even be better so http://vba-m.com/ ) if you just need to trade something quickly.

Well I was able to get back to my gba and I can say that the clean ROM i used to test single-pak multiplayer did work, but the game would not save (understandably, having now researched how the ez flash iv saves).

All of my games have been save patched but not reset patched for the exact reason that I thought only the reset patch stopped linking from working. Is there any way to make these games (Advance wars 2, Zelda LttP& Four swords, racing gears advance, pokemon games, etc.) save AND link? Ideally without losing my current save progress in any of them. Thanks for your time everyone